Berkshire Hathaway, the investment firm founded and run by Warren Buffett, purchased an additional 75 million shares of Apple (AAPL) during the first quarter of 2018. Buffett says he’d be glad to buy even more.
At Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s annual shareholder meeting, Buffett credited Apple with developing “extremely sticky” products to which consumers become attached and endorsed Apple’s decision to buy back its own stock, saying it was the technology company’s most productive use of cash.
“We would love to see Apple go down in price,” Buffett said. Berkshire is now Apple’s third largest shareholder, behind Vanguard Group and BlackRock Inc.
Buffett says he’s happy to see Apple repurchasing shares, basically increasing Berkshire Hathaway’s stake in the Cupertino firm without buying more stock.
“I’m delighted to see them repurchasing shares,” Buffett said, just two days after he revealed having bought 75 million additional Apple shares, and four days after Apple said it may repurchase $100 billion of stock. At the end of 2017, Berkshire had owned 165.3 million shares.
“I love the idea of having our 5 percent, or whatever it is, maybe grow to 6 or 7 percent without our laying out a dime.”
The news that Berkshire Hathaway had bought an additional 75 million Apple shares during Q1 2018, sent AAPL’s stock price to an all-time high.